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Stephen Stills (1970) (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Stephen Stills
  • Artist name: Stephen Stills
  • Year: 1970
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Atlantic Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: My parents each had a copy of this record. My father’s copy had a “G” written on the upper left corner of the album, and my mother’s copy had “Brenner” written on the back of the album and on the LP.
  • Buy it on Amazon: $12.00

Stephen Stills (1970)

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I don’t have any particular memory of listening to this record, though I might have heard it at some point. I do recognize one song by name, Love the One You’re With, and I’ve reviewed a wide variety of Stephen Stills’ work:

What I expected

This is Stephen Stills’ first solo record. I’ve already listened to his second, and thought that it was not good.

What it was actually like

This was nowhere near as bad as Stills’ second solo record, so that was a relief.

Love the One You’re With is a truly great pop song – fun and catchy, rich and complex, memorable, rhythmic and melodic, and I even didn’t mind the soul style backing vocals. The steel drums were maybe the only part of it that I would have cut.

For whatever reason that I was unable to determine, he then took those soul style backing vocals and made an entire song around them, Church (Part of Someone), which was terrible (and also too slow). Sit Yourself Down was similar, but not as bad.

To a Flame was easy listening, and also quite bad. I had a difficult time picking the worst song between that one and Cherokee, which was a weird grab bag of lots of different sounds, with an atrocious horns part, but decided that the latter was the worst because of its abysmal and nauseating saxophone solo.

The most pleasant surprise on the record was two songs at the end of the first side, Old Times Good Times, a great rock song with pretty strong wailing guitar, and Go Back Home, an excellent blues rock song. I was really impressed with Stills when I heard how great those two songs were, and then I checked the back of the album to read the credits… and who was it that played the guitar on those songs? Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. So, yeah.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

A Gift From a Flower to a Garden by Donovan (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: A Gift From a Flower to a Garden
  • Artist name: Donovan
  • Year: 1967
  • Number of discs: two
  • Label: Epic Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my father
  • Buy it on Amazon: $68.40

A Gift From a Flower to a Garden by Donovan

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never listened to this record before, but I recently reviewed The Real Donovan (1966) and thought it was not that bad!

What I expected

The Real Donovan was not that bad, but I’m getting a very bad sense about this double album.

First of all, lots of musicians were putting out double albums in the late 1960s, and the way they always did it was by having an extra sleeve in the album, and sticking the second record in there. For whatever reason, Donovan seems to have felt the need to go all out and create a whole box set for his double album, as if it was going to be an unforgettable experience to buy it and then take it home, lovingly unbox it, and diligently listen to it.

Moreover, there’s a folio inside, with DONOVAN printed on the cover, and he’s printed twelve sheets on very heavy stock, each in a different color and labeled “the first” through “the twelfth,” with a song name and that song’s lyrics, and a drawing that presumably illustrates the song. It’s as if he saw a William Blake book in a bookstore one day and decided to copy that exact idea.

Also, on the back cover, there’s a photograph of Donovan fawning towards his guru, captioned “His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the Author.”

In short, all indications are that this will be an extremely pretentious record.

What it was actually like

You know the famous story about how automatic double tracking was invented for the Beatles to use when recording Revolver? I’m all for new advances in music recording, but there’s a good reason why no one listens to Revolver and finds the vocals to be distractingly unnatural, which is that the Beatles knew not to overdo it. Since they understood that it was critical to integrate technological changes judiciously, why couldn’t they tell their pal Donovan to chill out and not ruin his record with the ADT effect?

The whole first LP was so heavy on the voice effect that I could not stop noticing it. It was very folk rock and very psychedelic, and I recognized Wear Your Love Like Heaven, but I would not recommend it.

The second LP was way better, far more about folk music and some folk rock, and what it lost in ADT, it gained in flute, which was particularly prominent in songs like The Enchanted Gypsy and The Tinker and the Crab.

A low point of the second LP was the sound effects – seagulls and laughing children – at the beginning of Song of the Naturalist’s Wife, and then again with more chirping birds at the beginning of The Magpie. That was totally unnecessary.

There was also absolutely no justification for making this a double album, since very few of the songs were memorable enough that they needed to have been included.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

The Circle Game by Tom Rush (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: The Circle Game
  • Artist name: Tom Rush
  • Year: 1968
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Elektra Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: I think this could have belonged to either of my parents.
  • Buy it on Amazon: $11.75

The Circle Game by Tom Rush

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m vaguely familiar with Tom Rush as a folk musician, and he made an appearance on The Bitter End Years (1974), but I don’t know much about him, and also might have mentally conflated him with Mark Rudd. Oops!

What I expected

Folk, maybe folk rock.

Also, the credits indicate that The Circle Game is the Joni Mitchell song from Ladies of the Canyon (1970) and Miles of Aisles (1974), and Something in the Way She Moves is the James Taylor song from James Taylor (1968).

What it was actually like

This was not really a folk record, and was mostly a collection of cover songs (with a bunch of originals, too) done in a country-influenced folk rock style.

The opening notes of Something in the Way She Moves sounded like a tribute to Bob Dylan, but it quickly turned into a fast, fun blues rock song with a great rhythm that was vastly better than James Taylor’s version, though still nothing at all like George Harrison’s song.

This version of Sunshine, Sunshine, another James Taylor song, was easy listening and totally forgettable.

I strongly disliked Rush’s version of the title track The Circle Game, which not only did not sound like the original (no great sin), but kind of reminded me of William Shatner’s version of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.

Rush’s version of Urge for Going, another Joni Mitchell song, sounded like a Gordon Lightfoot song because he used Lightfoot’s annoying vocal style.

The weirdest song on the record was probably The Glory of Love. It really was not bad, but was just a rather poor version of a Benny Goodman classic (here’s Peggy Lee, Benny Goodman & Ella Fitzgerald doing it, and here’s The Five Keys).

I did like his upbeat version of the Charlie Rich song So Long, however, especially its country rhythm guitar (here’s the original).

Rockport Sunday was a guitar instrumental that sounded like Neil Young a bit, or at least reminded me of him, and No Regrets also reminded me slightly of Neil Young – but from the era when he was not making good music, probably the late 1970s or 1980s.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Late for the Sky by Jackson Browne (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Late for the Sky
  • Artist name: Jackson Browne
  • Year: 1974
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Asylum Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: probably my mother
  • Buy it on Amazon: $36.31

Late for the Sky by Jackson Browne

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never listened to this record before, but it will be my fourth by Jackson Browne. The previous three were:

What I expected

More folk rock, country and easy listening.

What it was actually like

Late for the Sky and Fountain of Sorrow were pretty boring soft rock.

Farther On, The Late Show, For a Dancer and Before the Deluge all had more of a country sound, but not good country. They were more modern country songs, like you would hear on country radio stations, if for some reason you were being punished in that way.

The Road and the Sky and Walking Slow were more blues rock songs, far better than the others, and the latter had an electric guitar solo that was good.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Bee Gees’ 1st (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Bee Gees’ 1st
  • Group name: Bee Gees
  • Year: 1967
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Atco
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics:
    • “Gess” written on top right of album front, indicating that my father owned it
    • “GESSNER” written on top right of album back, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $17.14

Bee Gees' 1st

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never listened to this record before, or indeed any Bee Gees record, though I am familiar with them, and they came up on this site ten months ago when I reviewed Saturday Night Fever: The Original Movie Sound Track (1977). Not surprisingly, I was not a fan.

What I expected

Of course, when I think of the Bee Gees, I think of disco, but this record is from 1967, which is way too early for disco. It’s also got some wholesome, record company-approved psychedelia on the cover. I don’t really know what to expect.

What it was actually like

From the first few notes of the first song, Turn of the Century, I knew exactly what this record was not – disco – and exactly what it was – a cheap knockoff of Sgt. Pepper. That should not, of course, have been possible, since the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper in late May 1967 and the Bee Gees must already have been recording 1st before then, but it sure sounded awfully like a moderately talented group trying to to mimic the Beatles from exactly that era, at every single step.

To what extent did this record copy the Beatles? It even managed, somehow, to include some of Faul’s granny shit, the extremely Oompa Loompa song Craise Finton Kirk Royal Academy of Arts.

I may have recognized To Love Somebody, a pretty bad song with totally unnecessary orchestral backing.

The only song that did not sound entirely like a Beatles impersonation was Please Read Me, which sounded at parts like a Beach Boys impersonation.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me